First Name: Francis
Last Name: Sabol
Middle Initial: E
Date of Birth: 05/24/1950
Sex: Male
Martial Status: Married
Number of Children: Yes
Home Town: Tamaqua, Pennsylvania
Education Completed: Not Sure
Other Occupations:
Branch of Service: Army
Highest Rank: E5
Serial Number: N/A
Platoon: N/A
Age at Start of Service: 21
Years of Service: 5
Combat Veteran: Yes
Time in Combat: Not Sure
Place of Combat: N/A
Awards:
Date of Suicide: 06/1991
Suicide Method: slitting wrists & jumping
Veteran’s Story: My father served our country in Vietnam. He was in the area of intelligence. He joined the army to help our country. He was in Vietnam for only a year but that year has made a profound impact on his live and the lives of our family. He came back from the war and met my mother they then had a son together, my brother Francis. My brother has all kinds of emotional and health problems due to the use of “Agent orange” that was used in Vietnam to kill the plants so we could see the enemy. My brother has health problems to this day form “agent orange’s” affects. My father stated getting “sick” in 1979, 2 years after my birth and a few months after the birth of my younger sister. He had a well paying job at Bethlehem Steel that he couldn’t work at any more. He went in and out of Veterans Hospitals and Mental Health facilities for most of the 80′s. He and my mother had separated in 1985 because in his illness he was starting to have violent outbursts. He had attempted suicide a number of times. But on June 11, 1991 he succeeded he had slit his wrists and jumped off of the roof of my grandmother’s house. We didn’t have a dad anymore I was only 12 years old, my sister was 10, my brother was 15 and we have an older sister who was twenty and he was her dad too. We were never devastated in all our lives. Because our father going to help his country and the tactics used by our government in that “war” our lives and the world will be forever missing a very intelligent and special person.
Submitted By: Alicia Sabol
Relationship to Veteran: Child
